Still, they had successfully saved half their army from that attack, and had closed the distance by nearly two hundred meters. Now, it was time for my next spell, one I had for a while but never decided to cast. Looking at my status window, I was happy to see that I had received all of the soul energy from both tier 5 spells destroying the enemies. This was another thing I wouldn’t have normally done, as I promised myself not to take soul energy from people.
But again, war calls for a different code. My soul energy was higher than it had ever been before. “Spirits of the fallen, ghosts of battles past, grant one last time your power to he who knew you last. Upon this field, let those who stand witness your final glory. Let the march of destruction be your message to the world, that this is your power.”
In a way, this was my first true tier 5 spell, though that was before I knew what the term meant. And of course, since I had never tested it I hadn’t been able to confirm it. But, as I finished casting my spell, the sky darkened once more. The approaching army halted, as if preparing for another meteor, but that was not what this spell did. “Soul Storm.”
Transparent green lights shot down from the darkened sky, twisting through the air like a rain of specters. These ghosts of the fallen charged at their new enemies, passing through them as if they were nothing. Again, priests summoned a magical barrier to halt the spell, but that did nothing this time, the spirit forms simply passing through the ground to get to them. Grass withered in their wake, as all life seemed to simply be absorbed.
So far, I had used two ultimate abilities to destroy half of an army, and a third to use their energy and wipe out most of the other half. Unfortunately, despite there only being a few hundred people left of the once great army, these remaining members were likely the strongest. The only consolation was that they had been weakened by the previous spells. And without the need to march as an army, they could charge ahead at their own pace. The remaining seven hundred meters meant nothing now.
“Looks like it’s our turn.” Denise smiled next to me, pulling back the shadowy string of her bow to start firing bolts of energy into the bodies of the enemies. Many managed to evade before they were hit, causing only one or two more soldiers to fall. I no longer had the time to chant a tier 5 spell, and likely wouldn’t be allowed to chant any spell at all.
The first of the warriors arrived in seconds. He flashed before us at remarkable speed, causing Denise to quickly drop her bow and finish him off with her dagger. His leather armor, already torn and singed from the previous assaults, parted to allow her attack, and he fell behind us, his momentum causing his body to slide a considerable distance.
With that, the battle had truly begun. Everything before now could be considered merely a warm up. Stoneheart launched wave after wave of earth bullets and sand whips, Cynthia jumped towards a charging paladin to exchange blows, and I was left firing my spells rapidly towards any that approached me. I hope the others are having an easier time of this..
My first fight was between myself and a group consisting of a priest and two holy warriors. From their formation, I had guessed that they came from the same church, as they seemed to know each others’ fighting styles well. The two warriors charged me together, causing me to use my flight spell to avoid them. Once I was out of their reach, I began exchanging blasts of magic with their priest, while occasionally launching a blast to the warriors to let them know I hadn’t forgotten them.
This fight dragged on for only a minute, but it felt like hours. Even my insane mana recovery was barely able to keep up with the speed that I was launching spells. The one good thing about this was that my opponent ‘priest’ was predictable. All of his spells were from the Holy magic school, and most of them were of the light element. That gave me the easy job of countering the spells.
“Oh holy father, who art in Heaven.” I could hear one of the two warriors praying below, and soon the other one joined in. “Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” The two warriors held high their blade, which began shining with a bright light, before they shouted in unison.
“Judgement!”
I almost didn’t have a chance to react as the two thrust out their swords, light extending from it in a similar manner to what the angel had attacked me with a few days before the battle. Though, I had the feeling that this attack was more powerful. The two rays of light, acting with the teamwork of both warriors, joined into one and sailed towards me.
I didn’t dare take the attack head on, and attempted to deflect it with a series of carefully placed mana blasts while flying to the side to dodge. However, the ray of light abruptly turned in the air to follow my path, and I was left with no alternative but to block it. I really hope this works. Raising both hands, I temporarily ignored the priest in order to deal with this attack.
The mana blasts I had thrown didn’t have the slightest effect on the incoming spell, but there was at least one thing I knew would stop it. It wasn’t really a pleasant idea, but it would work! Give the thing exactly what it wants. Pouring magic into my hands and projecting it outwards, I hurriedly cast the clone spell, creating a near perfect copy of myself.
Just as the clone finished forming, the blade of light pierced through its back. For a moment, I thought that the spell was going to continue on, but it just stayed there, until both it and the clone faded away into nothing. Damn, is that meant to be some sort of sure-kill spell? I made a mental note to watch out for more spells like that in the future, and decided I needed to hurry up and finish this quickly. Denise and Cynthia seemed to be handling themselves far better than I was, making sure not to let anyone pass their respective positions.
Turning back to the priest, I saw that he was now chanting a spell of his own. As I focused, I could see the swirl of runes building up around him, letting me identify the spell before it was even cast. “Sorry, but no time to play anymore…”
With a sigh, I used my Lesser Creation to make my favorite pair of revolvers, ready to kick this up to the next level. I wasn’t at all sure, but I suspected that with my demon form I had roughly two hundred and fifty mana per second. Each normal bullet cost five mana to load and fire, spell shots cost more. Suddenly, more and more revolvers began forming themselves in the air around me, not stopping until I was surrounded by a total of twenty silver guns, all pointed at the priest.
Using my aura to hold the guns in place, I was able to control them through a manner similar to telekinesis. Adding in my two held guns, nearly two dozen firearms were pointing at the priest just as he finished his spell. More rays of light shot out from his body at me, but these weren’t immune to interception like the spell the warriors used.
“Foresight, I’m counting on you to help aim.” With that, all of the guns in the air around me subtly shifted, using the information obtained from my infernal earring to fire spelled bullets at each ray of light. Next, those twenty guns turned and fired a normal barrage at the warriors below, while I unloaded my own weapons into the priest.
To my surprise, that still didn’t make as much of a dent in my mana as the normal spells I had been launching. It did, however, serve to quickly kill all three enemies. Next, me and my personal arsenal dropped to the ground, my eyes closed so that I could focus on all of the information Foresight was sending me. Three hundred enemies remaining on this end?
Aiming my gun at a nearby approaching group, I couldn’t help but crack a grin as an idea came to me. It couldn’t be that easy, right? Loading in a specially made spell bullet, I pulled the trigger to activate it. At the same time, I rapidly expanded my aura out in that direction to constantly feed the spell engraved into it.
To my surprise, that one bullet took out a group of twenty people, though it also consumed nearly four thousand mana. The reason it had such an effect, of course, was the particular spell I gave it. It was the same spell I had used to counter the Judgement spell, Create Clone. As soon as I fired the bullet, it split into two. Then, since I kept feeding it mana the entire t
ime, two became four, four became eight, and over two hundred bullets ending up impacting the enemy group like a wall of lead.
After that display, I pointed my guns outwards, spreading them out around me to warn off others from approaching. Well, I’d like to say that’s the reason, but having nearly half of my mana drained in the blink of an eye had given me a major headache. It took a few moments before my mana was replenished enough to resume the fight, and now I was using a different type of spell bullets.
With each pull of a trigger, a surge of blue flame shot out of its respective gun, surging towards the target. These Frostfire Bullets, as I liked to call them, were not as fast as normal ones because the spell itself consumed the bullet when it fired. However, it tore through any material defense in its path, quickly reducing the three hundred remaining enemies in front of me to a mere ten. And each of these ten had defended thanks to magically enchanted armor or quickly erected barriers.
“Hey, Jin! If you could do that, why not help out sooner?” Denise walked up next to me from behind, having apparently finished her latest battle and decided to simply watch how I performed. Foresight was able to locate several wounds on her body, but her regeneration was kicking in fast enough for them to close right before my eyes.
My answer was a sigh, my guns moving to encompass her in their defensive perimeter as well. “I didn’t really know that I could. These should be the top elites from our section.” I nodded my head towards the ten remaining enemies, who had clustered together for safety, and slowly began advancing towards us.
“Yeah, they feel a bit stronger than the others. Not enough to really effect the battle, but we do have a job to do, right?” Denise glanced at me curiously, and I nodded.
Cynthia and Stoneheart, our two loyal tanks, approached as well now. Considering that a few minutes ago, the battle was four against thousands, I felt immensely more comfortable with the odds at four against ten. “You guys want to handle this group?” This time, it wasn’t out of some fake display of weakness, I honestly had no confidence to handle them. All of the enemies remaining were those that had high magic resistance, meaning my spells would be almost useless against them.
Well, I could probably handle them with guns, or a tier 5 spell, but there were no guarantees. Cynthia didn’t seem to understand why I was handing off the elites to them, but Denise knew me better, and nodded. Following her signal to get behind her, I stayed back with Stoneheart while the two ladies marched forward.
Thankfully, the ten enemies remaining weren’t uninjured. My initial attacks consisted of three massive spells, so it would be impossible for them to have just shrugged it off. The one in the best condition stood in the lead, with a minor burn on his cheek and several holes in his armor, but was otherwise fine. The worst, however, was missing his right arm and his armor was almost nonexistent.
As the two women walked up, the men on the opposing side raised their weapons to face them. Normally, they might not consider the two to be a credible threat, but they had just seen them each holding their own in this hectic battle. Denise may have suffered a few light injuries that she was able to recover from, but from what I could see Cynthia’s armor hadn’t been dented yet.
Cynthia equipped a pair of swords, one short sword and one bastard sword. The short sword, I knew had a vorpal effect, meaning that it was able to cleanly penetrate armor. Though magical enchantments may prevent this effect, it’s still a dangerous weapon. Her other sword, however, was the infernal sword Shadow’s Blade, capable of projecting darkness and using it to teleport short distances. It was essentially the larger version of Denise’s dagger, Shadow’s Edge, which she had equipped.
The two of them looked at each other, nodded, and each brought their infernal weapons forward. At the same time, a field of darkness spread out from them, encircling the current battlefield. Is this the same effect that the warriors before had when they combined the casting of their spells? It was likely that multiple casters using the same spell were capable of combining their effects, but I had never fought with another caster to test it, aside from Dariel. But, I hadn’t thought of such things at that time, so sue me.
Thanks to Foresight, I was still able to see perfectly well in this darkness, although it did not last for long. Around the enemy forces, a faint aura of light was spreading outwards. Must be a Daylight effect to counter darkness spells.
The darkness had served its purpose, though. Using the special abilities of their weapons, Denise and Cynthia had teleported directly into their formation. Each of them used a single swing of their arms to take out an enemy before the remaining eight could react. They were now surrounded, but the girls were used to that by now.
Cynthia took up a defensive posture, ready to intercept attacks heading towards either herself or Denise, while the other woman seemed to blink out of existence. Using her insane speed, she swung out towards the opponents in front of her, keeping her body moving so as to make it difficult to target her.
To my surprise, there was another high speed enemy within their group as well, though not to the extreme that Denise was performing. As someone that had developed almost purely for speed combat, there were few at this stage that could match her in a prolonged chase. Still, this was a bit too close for my liking, so I silently cast Enchant Speed on Denise. Judging by the brief look she sent my way, she noticed the boost.
Immediately, her speed increased enough that she overwhelmed the enemy and had him silenced as well. From there, the rest of the opponents might as well have been standing still. In reality, they had all begun charging the only enemy they could clearly target, bringing swords and hammers down on Cynthia. Cynthia, in return, crouched her body down and raised her two weapons to block the attacks, while muttering something under her breath.
What happened next I couldn’t be entirely clear on thanks to my positioning, but what Foresight saw was that all of the enemy attacks suddenly passed through her weapons as if they weren’t there. And a moment later, they really weren’t. Instead, she was holding a long steel shaft with a lightning bolt-shaped spearhead that had a yellow Mana Stone in the blade.
Lightning erupted around her, pushing back the seven attacking enemies while she stood up. Clutching her spear, her body was wrapped in a Lightning Aura, the special effect of that weapon. In case you’ve forgotten what that spell can do, here’s a good reminder.
Assuming another stance, Cynthia held the spear and pointed the tip at the nearest enemy. In a lunge that would make Denise proud, the spear itself shot forward at a rapid pace, piercing the man’s heart before coming back. In the next instant, she slapped the shaft of the spear against two more enemies, stunning them with the electric effect.
Thanks to her highly increased reaction speed, she didn’t pause at all between one attack and the next, fluidly shifting her spear to stab each enemy a single time. Each strike aimed at gaps in the armor, making sure that each hit would either kill or paralyze. The only one left standing by the end was a man carrying a two handed sword, which had barely managed to parry her attack. This was also the same man I originally noticed to be the least wounded from the group.
Seemingly expecting his comrades to get back up, the enemy fighter hadn’t noticed Denise following Cynthia’s actions, finishing off anyone that simply fell to the ground with another stab. By the time he figured out that he was the only one left, it was already a battle of two versus one. Despite all of this, the expression on his face had never shown the slightest hint of panic. Rather, now that he had been outnumbered, he determined the battle not worth fighting.
“Sanctuary.” As soon as he spoke the word, a bright light shone down from the sky and surrounded him. The two girls, unaware of what he was doing, attempted to quickly finish him off. However, their attacks struck against the light and simply bounced off, unable to break through. “Sorry, but I’ll have to cut this short. I can better serve if I don’t throw my life away here.”
A bit dumbstruck by those words, I couldn’
t help but simply watch as his body rose up into the air, vanishing into the light that surrounded him. “That… was anticlimactic. Shouldn’t he have stuck around for a long, drawn out battle before doing that?”
The girls looked at me, and Denise raised an eyebrow. I had the feeling that Cynthia did, too, but it was hard to tell under her demonic helmet. “Well, you do have a point. Maybe he just figured it wasn’t worth getting beat by a pair of girls?” Denise smirked at her comment, walking back over to us.
I sighed, shaking my head and walking back to the entrance of the valley. Unless more soldiers appeared out of nowhere, this should be the end of our part.
You have successfully defended the battle of Devil’s Valley. +400 Fame.
Dominion has increased to 30
You have mastered Dominion, and earned the title of Archmage! +10000 Fame for being the first Archmage in many years. As an Archmage, Magical Talent, Magical Knowledge, Mana Pool, and Mana Recovery have been combined into Magic Mastery.
The Dive: Birth of a Hero Page 49